The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, or NASEM, is an independent, 162-year-old nongovernmental agency tasked with investigating and reporting on a wide range of subjects. In recent years, diversity, equity and inclusion — collectively known as D.E.I. — have been central to its agenda.
But the Academies’ priorities changed abruptly on Jan. 31. Shortly after receiving a “stop work” order from the Trump administration, the institute closed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion, removed prominent links to its work on D.E.I. from its website’s homepage and paused projects on related themes.
Now the website highlights the Academies’ interest in artificial intelligence and “our work to build a robust economy.”
The quick about-face reflects the severe impact that President Trump’s executive order on D.E.I. is having on scientific institutions across the nation, both governmental and private. The crackdown is altering scientific exploration and research agendas across a broad swath of fields.
NASA cut requirements for inclusivity from several of its programs. The National Institutes of Health removed the application for its new Environmental Justice Scholars Program. National laboratories under the Department of Energy took down web pages that had expressed a commitment to diversity, while the department suspended its promotion of inclusive and equitable research.
None of these federal agencies responded to requests for comment.
Many organizations initiated D.E.I. programs as a way to correct historical underrepresentation of minorities in the sciences. According to one report, in 2021, just 35 percent of STEM employees were women, 9 percent were Black and less than 1 percent were Indigenous.
“If we want to be the best country for the world in terms of science, we need to leverage our entire population to do so,” said Julie Posselt, an associate dean at the University of Southern California. D.E.I. programs, she added, “have ensured that the diverse population we have can make its way into the scientific work force.”
Federal frenzy
One NASA program affected is FarmFlux, a research initiative on agricultural emissions that redacted plans to recruit from “diverse student groups” for its team. Mentions of another, called Here to Observe, which partners with smaller academic institutions to expose historically underrepresented students to planetary science, have been removed from the space agency’s website.
Peter Eley, a dean at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University who, in 2023, worked as a liaison for minority-serving institutions in NASA’s Office of STEM, noted that such programs often support students from lower-income rural communities, regardless of their racial background.
Many of these students “don’t know what’s out there,” Dr. Eley said. “They don’t have the opportunity to see what is possible.”
At the National Science Foundation, an agencywide review of current awards supporting D.E.I. initiatives is underway. Part of the agency’s grant criteria includes “broader impacts,” defined as the potential to benefit society. That encompasses, but is not limited to, efforts to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in science.
According to a program director at the N.S.F., who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, a software algorithm flagged grants that included words and phrases often associated with D.E.I., including “activism” and “equal opportunity.” Other words it searched for were more nebulous — “institutional,” “underappreciated” and “women” — or can mean something else in scientific research, like “bias” and “polarization.”
N.S.F. officials were instructed to manually review grants flagged by the algorithm. Some staff members, including the N.S.F. program director, made a point of removing the flag from most awards. “I’ll probably get in trouble for doing that,” she said. “But I’m not in the business of McCarthyism.”
The N.S.F. did not answer questions sent by The New York Times regarding its ongoing review of awards. Scientists funded by the agency whose research has D.E.I. components said that they had not received enough information about how to comply with the executive order.
“Do you drop what you’re supposed to do as part of your N.S.F. proposal, or do you risk being noncompliant with this very vague guidance?” asked Adrian Fraser, a physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Diana Macias, an N.S.F.-funded forest ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, worried that her involvement in recruiting people from tribal communities to manage the local environment would end. Threats to the forest “require a broad coalition of people” to mitigate, she said, adding that the executive order would have ramifications on the landscape.
‘Obeying in advance’
Several scientists expressed concern that organizations within the federal sphere seem to be overcomplying, prompting confusion and resentment.
“They’re obeying in advance, they’re going beyond what the executive order says,” said Christine Nattrass, a physicist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who conducts research at Brookhaven National Laboratory and emphasized that she was not speaking on behalf of her institutions.
According to Dr. Nattrass, internal documents at the lab are being scrubbed of references related to D.E.I. efforts. At least one code of conduct, which outlines expected professional behavior within research collaborations — such as treating others with respect and being mindful of cultural differences — has been taken down.
The community of people involved with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory — a worldwide group that includes independent scientists, data managers and other workers — noticed last week that private Slack channels set up for L.G.B.T.Q. members were quietly being retired. At Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, researchers noticed that a prominent rainbow Pride flag had been removed from inside the lab’s main building. Scientists at all three federal facilities were left uncertain whether the executive order actually extended to internal documents, internal communication channels or flags.
“It was devastating,” said Samantha Abbott, a physics graduate student who conducts research at Fermilab. To Ms. Abbott, who is transgender, the flag represented years’ worth of advocacy efforts at the lab. “And it’s just all gone in a matter of days.”
Neither the observatory nor the labs responded to requests for comment.
That sense of compliance appeared to extend beyond federal institutions. Two decades ago, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine helped to highlight the issue of racial disparities in health care, with a landmark report recommending that minorities be better represented in health professions. More recently, NASEM participated in an ambitious effort to root out the use of race in clinical algorithms that guide medical treatment.
The quick retreat this week from a core mission stunned many NASEM employees. “D.E.I. has been at the center of what the institution has focused on for the last decade,” said one staff member, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “It shows up in everything we do.”
The Academies are privately operated, but they receive a majority of their support from government contracts. Fifty-eight percent of their program expenditures came from federal government contracts last year, according to Dana Korsen, a spokesperson for the institute.
The independent Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the largest basic biomedical research philanthropies in the world, recently canceled a $60 million program called Inclusive Excellence that aimed to boost inclusivity in STEM education.
A spokeswoman for the institute, Alyssa Tomlinson, said the institute “remains committed to supporting outstanding scientists and talented students training to become scientists” through other programs. Ms. Tomlinson declined to explain why the institution had cut off the funding.
Scientists abroad also worried about the D.E.I. rollbacks. One American working in Canada was concerned how his grant applications, which describe research that will be conducted on U.S. soil, would be received by Canadian funding agencies in light of the federal changes.
“With tariff threats, America first and no more D.E.I., there’s a lot less incentive for the Canadian feds to fund anything in the U.S.,” said the scientist, who asked not to be identified. “And then there goes 95 percent of my research program.”
Johan Bonilla Castro, a nonbinary Latinx physicist at Northeastern University who emphasized that they were not speaking for their employer, has decided to continue their D.E.I. initiatives, which involve promoting particle physics research in Costa Rica. They also have chosen to continue writing about their racial and gender identity in grant proposals, even if it ultimately results in being denied funding.
“I will continue to say it and have it rejected,” Dr. Bonilla Castro said. “I can sterilize my research, sure. But that impacts my dignity.”
